Venezuela

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has now been offered asylum in three American countries: Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. He has applied for asylum in six additional countries, according to WikiLeaks. And his chances for reaching a safe haven are growing further because of US interference in the process, according to Michael Bochenek, director of law and policy at Amnesty International.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa stated in an interview this month that his government would consider granting political asylum to Syrian head-of-state Bashar al Assad. President Assad is reportedly mulling asylum for himself, his family members, and close associates, in the event that he is forced to flee Damascus as the bloody civil war in his country escalates.

Sources state that, in a bid to explore the possibility of asylum, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal al Miqdad, recently traveled to Ecuador, Venezuela, and Cuba, bearing letters from Assad to the President of each country.

Correa confirmed that Miqdad visited Quito in late November, but said that the purpose of the trip was to thank Correa's administration for its "objective stance" regarding the conflict in Syria. Both Ecuador's President and his Foreign Minister denied reports that Assad had requested political asylum. However, since then Correa has spoken out regarding the possibility of hosting Assad, saying:"Any person that requests asylum in Ecuador, obviously we are going to consider as a human being whose basic rights we have to respect … Can we believe all those news stories on violence, the dictator? Let's remember what was said about Iraq."

WikiLeaks has been financially blockaded without process for 539 days.Julian Assange has been detained without charge for 536 days.Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without trial for 733 days.
A secret Grand Jury has been active in the U.S. without transparency for 619 days.

As the presidential election nears, Republicans are relying on their usual fear-mongering tactics by playing on supposed external threats such as Iran. Already it seems such a strategy seems to have moved Obama to the right with the president going out of his way to issue stern warnings toward the Islamic Republic during his State of the Union address. What is more, in a worrying development the Republicans are doing their utmost to link Iran with the Latin American populist left and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, which could have undesirable and unforeseen consequences on U.S. foreign policy.

According to secret U.S. State Department cables recently released by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks, American diplomats from Hillary Clinton on down have little evidence of a significant military alliance between Iran and Venezuela, yet that didn't stop surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum from exaggerating the threat from this quarter in a recent debate. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has meanwhile been holding hearings on the supposed Iranian-Latin American threat to the U.S.

Hopefully the Democrats will not seek to echo the Chávez-Ahmadinejad military angle which will only serve to further inflame the tattered state of U.S.-Venezuelan relations, yet it's no secret that the Obama administration, like its predecessor, would like to rid itself of the populist left current in Latin America. Such combative posturing is not only regrettable but counter-productive. Indeed, further cables released by WikiLeaks suggest that, with a little bit of effort, Washington might be able to mend fences with Chávez. Whatever the Venezuelan leader may say in public about the U.S. and its wider objectives throughout the region, in private Chávez has been more than happy to search for common ground and extend an olive branch.

Even during the darkest days of the Bush administration, Venezuela made efforts to mend relations with Washington. In 2005, for example, Chávez's Minister of Communications Andrés Izarra met with U.S. ambassador in Caracas William Brownfield. In an earlier meeting, Brownfield had suggested that Venezuelan journalists visit the U.S., an idea which Izarra had found lacking as "such visits might merely be indoctrination trips by the U.S. government." Nevertheless, during his follow up visit Izarra suggested that the two countries should explore the idea of conducting journalist exchanges, provided of course that the U.S. would follow up in kind and "invite U.S. journalists to Venezuela for reciprocal visits to poor Venezuelan communities where they might witness the government of Venezuela social missions."

Izarra's offer seems reasonable enough, yet the caustic and dismissive Brownfield was skeptical of Chávez's so-called "charm offensive." The ambassador remarked that Izarra had acted "very severely" toward several accredited U.S. journalists based in Venezuela. Izarra retorted that several American reporters, including the correspondent of the Miami Herald, had been "consistently and erroneously critical of the government of Venezuela and its policies," and therefore the Minister believed he "had a duty to criticize their errors."

Predictably, the meeting did not bear any fruit. It was unlikely, Brownfield remarked, that the U.S. Embassy would ever coordinate any journalist visits to Venezuela. Writing to his superiors in Washington after the meeting, Brownfield declared sarcastically "the charm offensive continues...Our judgment is still that the government of Venezuela offensive is tactical in nature."

As the political relationship deteriorated between the Bush administration and Chávez, so, too, did collaboration on the U.S.-sponsored drug war. Recently released cables document the testy and "ambivalent" dynamic, with U.S. ambassador William Brownfield commenting that Chávez's anti-drug czar Luis Correa appeared to be "penalizing" a non-governmental organization called Alianza "for having too close of a relationship with us."

Brownfield was rather suspicious of Correa, noting to his superiors that the Venezuelan was a professional intelligence officer. Before taking up his post heading up anti-drug efforts, Correa directed a technical unit that targeted the U.S. Mission. Correa was responsible for monitoring U.S. Embassy communications with teltap and cellular intercept equipment. "Notches on Correa's belt" included turning a U.S. government informant and "penetrating an unclassified email system." Correa, Brownfield explained, directed a computer hacker who was able to obtain Embassy staff's e-mails and conducted surveillance of DEA agents, infiltrating the organization in the process and sabotaging equipment.

Not surprisingly, bilateral anti-drug cooperation almost hit rock bottom, and the only active joint project consisted of a port security project. After months of delay, the Venezuelans authorized U.S. officials to conduct an anti-drug training session. However, several no-shows failed to attend as they had become "apprehensive" about political persecution. Correa also snubbed the U.S. by refusing to attend the event, claiming that a Chávez coup plotter served on the board of directors of Alianza which sponsored the event.

Underscoring the highly sensitive political environment in Venezuela, U.S. diplomats alerted Washington in 2008 to an odd incident which had occurred at the Caracas airport. One evening, the manager for American Airlines in Venezuela called the U.S. Embassy to report that the captain and crew of flight 903 were being held at the airport. What was the reason? Apparently, upon landing a crew member had remarked "'Welcome to Venezuela. Local Chávez time is' X."

One year earlier, Venezuela had created its own time zone, and most likely the crew member was simply reminding the passengers of this fact so as to turn their clocks back 30 minutes. However, one passenger thought the crewmember had actually said "loco Chávez time" while Venezuelan immigration officials claimed the actual quote was "the hour of the crazy Chávez and his women." American Airlines diffused the situation by flying the captain and crew out of Venezuela shortly thereafter and offering profuse apologies to Chávez authorities.

"Fascist" Elements Within Chávez's Coalition?

In another unrelated cable, the U.S. Embassy made explosive and incendiary charges regarding Chávez's inner circle. During a lunch, a "well respected political economist" told embassy staff that Minister of Public Works and Housing Diosdado Cabello "was expanding his network of corruption into the financial sector." Cabello, the source claimed, had joined with several other veterans of Chávez's 1992 attempted coup and this "fascist and military" trend "was gaining ascendancy within Chavismo" to the detriment of older leftists.

More incendiary revelations from WikiLeaks: now comes a cable from 2008 reporting on U.S. wariness of Aeropostal, an airline whose owners, the Makled family, were "Venezuela's preeminent drug traffickers." When Aeropostal sought to extend its flights to the U.S., the American Embassy in Caracas recommended that the request be denied. Furthermore, diplomats believed that the Chávez government's decision to allow the Makleds to purchase Aeropostal "sheds further doubt on Venezuelan aviation security."

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was so worried about Walid Makled that it issued a report entitled "Venezuela: Business Entrepreneur Dominates Cocaine Trade." The report asserted that Makled leveraged "his involvement in the transportation industry to facilitate drug shipments and provide cover for his own illicit activities."

Speaking to the Americans, an Aeropostal representative rejected the allegations but admitted that the new owners of the airline "know nothing about aviation." U.S. diplomats however were unconvinced, remarking that "this claim of ignorance about aviation seems odd, when according to the DIA report, the Makleds own a small airport they use to ferry drugs to Mexico twice a week."

At the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, diplomatic staff routinely spoke to the rightist Chávez opposition during the Bush years. But in 2004, an odd encounter occurred between the Americans and Chávez's former wife, Herma Marksman, who held a rather disparaging view of the Venezuelan president. Marksman, a history professor who was married to Chávez between 1984 and 1993, told U.S. diplomats that the firebrand populist was ambitious from an early age and "even thought of running the country as a 20 year-old."

Later, as a junior officer, Chávez fell under the influence of Douglas Bravo, a former Communist and guerrilla leader from the 1960s. According to Marksman it was Bravo, and not Chávez, who developed the political philosophy of the Bolivarian Revolution. Though Marksman cast Chávez as an intellectual lightweight, she added that he "should not be underestimated." The Venezuelan was "an excellent storyteller, who often characterizes his opponents as devils, which is a powerful religious symbol to the poor."

According to Marksman, Chávez was unscrupulous, "trusted few people" and "does not have true friends." If he had a problem, Marksman added, Chávez would only confide in his brother Adan or Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Marksman remarked cryptically that several individuals within the Chávez government were "dangerous," including some figures in the inner circle such as Diosdado Cabello (for more on him, stay tuned for future posts).

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.

>> The leader of India’s BJP party, L.K. Advani, demands that the Manmohan Singh government quit voluntarily and defends the authenticity of the information published by WikiLeaks.

>>A Públicareports on diplomatic cable revealing Bush administration's views on Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations, then headed by Celso Amorim, as anti-american.
During a meeting in 2005, U.S. Ambassador John Danilovich showed himself disappointed by Amorim’s refusal to see Hugo Chavez as threat.

>> Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed a cache of more than 3.000 unreleased submissions he took from WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks responded to these allegations with two statements, attributed to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, where it is suggested Daniel Domscheit-Berg and his wife Anke maintained contact with the FBI to whom they provided ‘helpful’ information.
Today, WikiLeaks specified the content of some of the destroyed documents in a series of tweets:

We can confirm that the DDB claimed destroyed data included a copy of the entire US no-fly list.

(…) five gigabytes from the Bank of America.
(…) the internals of around 20 neo-Nazi organizations.
(…) US intercept arrangements for over a hundred internet companies.

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.- New Cables were released yesterday and today.

06:45 PM Newspaper El Comercio reports on a cable dating from 2006 revealing how then Ecuatorian Presidential candidate Xavier Neira’s visa was revoked by the United States as he was involved in a legal battle against Pfizer.

05:50 PMMacbeth is quoted in a cable regarding Dominican Republic’s 2004 Presidential election, titled ‘Balaguer’s ghost’. The passage refers to Joaquin Balaguer’s ‘repeated manipulation of elections to ensure his own continuation’ (he was elected President in three different occasions) in comparison to then president Hipolito Mejia who was trying to lift the constitution ban on reelection and undertook similar efforts to stay in power.

According to the cable, ‘influential, sophisticated business executives’ warned the U.S. Ambassador that if the ruling party PRD (Meija’s Dominican Revolutionary Party) won the 2004 elections there would be ‘civil war’.

In their correspondence with the State Department, U.S. diplomats in South America have been exceptionally paranoid about the activities of Hugo Chávez and the possibility of a leftist regional alignment centered upon Venezuela. That, at least, is the unmistakable impression that one is left with by reading U.S. cables recently disclosed by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks, and it's a topic about which I have written widely in recent months. Yet, with President Hugo Chávez's health now fading fast and Venezuela looking like a rather spent force politically, it would seem natural that Washington will eventually turn its sights upon other rising powers --- countries like Brazil, for instance.

Judging from WikiLeaks cables, the U.S. doesn't have much to fear from this South American juggernaut in an ideological sense, and indeed leftist diplomats within Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs are regarded as outmoded and anachronistic relics of the past. Nevertheless, Brazil is a rising player in the region and U.S. diplomats are keenly aware of this fact. For the time being, Brazil and the United States maintain a cordial, if not exactly stellar diplomatic relationship. As Venezuela fades and Washington struggles to maintain its crumbling hegemony in the wider region, however, Brazil and the U.S. will inevitably develop rivalries.

Over the past few years, the international left has derived much satisfaction from the course of South American political and economic integration. The novelty of such integration is that it has proceeded along progressive lines and has been pushed by regional leaders associated with the so-called "Pink Tide." With so many leftist leaders in power, it is plausible to surmise that a left bloc of countries might challenge Washington's long-term hemispheric agenda. Yet, behind all of the lofty rhetoric and idealism, serious fissures remain within South America's leftist movement, both within individual countries and within the larger regional milieu.

That, at least, is the impression I got from reading U.S. State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. Take, for example, the Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva administration in Brazil, which at times encouraged a "hostile" climate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA, a corporately-sponsored plan backed by Washington, while on other occasions encouraging "public doubt and confusion through its own often-conflicting statements" about the accord. Behind the scenes, the Brazilian government was much more divided on the matter than commonly portrayed, torn between its South American loyalties on the one hand and the desire to gain access to the lucrative U.S. market for agricultural and industrial goods on the other.

With a big question mark hanging over the health of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, many in Washington may see opportunity. Though Chávez initially claimed that he was merely suffering from a "pelvic abscess," the firebrand leader subsequently conceded that he had cancer. In a shock to the nation, Chávez announced that he had a tumor removed during a sojourn in Cuba, and that he would "continue battling."

Reporting over the past several weeks suggests that Chávez might be in worse shape than has been commonly let on. Though he returned to Venezuela after his operation in Cuba, Chávez recently announced that he would pay yet another visit to Cuba in order to undergo chemotherapy. The firebrand leader, however, still refuses to reveal what kind of cancer he has or its severity. Ominously, one medical source reported to Reuters that Chávez's cancer had spread to the rest of his body and was in an advanced stage.

It's unclear how the president's shaky health might factor in the nation's upcoming 2012 election. The populist leader, who has closely identified himself with the so-called "Bolivarian Revolution," has never shown much interest in grooming a successor within his own United Socialist Party of Venezuela or PSUV, and so if Chávez should falter it is easy to imagine a scenario in which much of his political project could unravel or be derailed by the right.

The Caracas Cables

Judging from U.S. State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks, many American diplomats, including former ambassador in Caracas Charles Shapiro, would view this outcome as highly desirable. In 2004, two years after the Bush administration aided the rightist opposition in its short-lived coup attempt against Chávez, Shapiro sat down with Alí Rodríguez, the head of Venezuela's state-run oil company

With a big question mark hanging over the health of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the right wing opposition sees opportunity. Though Chávez initially claimed that he was merely suffering from a "pelvic abscess," the firebrand leader subsequently conceded that he had cancer. In a shock to the nation, Chávez announced that he had a tumor removed during a sojourn in Cuba, and that he would "continue battling."

It's unclear how the president's shaky health might factor in the nation's upcoming 2012 election. The populist leader, who has closely identified himself with the so-called "Bolivarian Revolution," has never shown much interest in grooming a successor within his own United Socialist Party of Venezuela or PSUV, and so if Chávez should falter it is easy to imagine a scenario in which much of his political project could unravel or be derailed by the right.

Reporting over the past several weeks suggests that Chávez might be in worse shape than has been commonly let on. Though he returned to Venezuela after his operation in Cuba, Chávez recently announced that he would pay yet another visit to Cuba in order to undergo chemotherapy. The firebrand leader, however, still refuses to reveal what kind of cancer he has or its severity. Ominously, one medical source reported to Reuters that Chávez's cancer had spread to the rest of his body and was in an advanced stage. Hardly inspiring confidence, Chávez remarked "I have faith in God, science and our Cuban and Venezuelan doctors, all the people who attend to me and finally myself and this will to live."

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.New Cables were released today.

02:05 PMMurdoch Leaks is a new website that, as the name indicates, is accepting information on 'wrong doing relating to Rupert Murdoch's affiliated institutions'.

10:40 AM A diplomatic cable from 2009 offers insight into Canada’s approach to foreign policy in Latin America.
Former Australian prime minister John Howard's influence on Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s strategy is described in paragraph 2.
(Harper had caused controversy in 2008 when he copied parts of a Howard speech supporting U.S. led invasion of Iraq.)

…"Harper had long been favorably impressed by Australia's ability to exert outsized influence with the U.S. in particular -- and other powers as well -- by emphasizing its relations in its own neighborhood, observed Lambert, who added that PM Harper hoped to gain similar benefits for Canada by increased attention to Latin America and the Caribbean. When forming his second government after the October 2008 election, PM Harper also created the new position of Minister of State for the Americas, naming former journalist and new Conservative MP Peter Kent."

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.

*Updated: Fourteen people arrested in the U.S., suspected of being in connection with the group that carried DDoS attacks on Paypal's website as a form of protest against the financial blockade that has been imposed on WikiLeaks.

* No legal grounds to prosecute Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai based on diplomatic cables published by The Guardian, a panel has decided.
For more on this subject please read No Prosecution of Morgan Tsvangirai.

* A cablereveals how the United States was warned by Senator Heraclito Fortes, the Brazilian chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations and National Defense committee, against a collaboration between Iran, Russia, and Venezuela to promote ‘Anti-American’ ideology and make more arms available to radical populist governments in Latin America.

Venezuela’s interference and influence in the region, and a perceived closer relation between Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador were matters of concern.

Fortes told the Ambassador, poloff, and assistant army attache that he is "truly concerned" about Iranian and Venezuelan activities in the region, including financing "friendship organizations" between congresses and even potentially financing arms sales.
(...)